eat you alive
by livblaines
Summary: A collection of unconnected Liv/Blaine drabbles.
1. Pilot

She had looked untouchable.

Dark hair strewn too neatly against her back. The flowers of her dress unplucked.

Eyes skirting past him. Mind sinking through the ocean, spinning towards the sky, turning anywhere other than the boat.

She had looked out of place. He wanted to fix her there.

Her thoughts had seemed to weigh her limbs steady still. He wanted to fog them, drug them, free.

She had looked untouchable – so, of course, he wanted to eat her whole.

(Months later, he'll see her with bits of someone else's brain on her lips.)

(And, hey, that works fine for him too.)


	2. Brother, Can You Spare a Brain?

Sex has never disturbed Liv. It's never turned her tongue to lead, or her cheeks to rose petals. It's biological. Physical. Ignore the frills, and it's science, really, and so right in her wheelhouse. Nothing to stutter or _um_ your way around; not when frankness is the clear winning bet for safe intimacy.

(Never mind the painter currently coursing through her system; his certainty that sex is an act of beauty, of art, of anything but science.)

Frankness. Biology. She knows all of this. Nevertheless, a cringe still climbs the curve of her face when she turns around to find Blaine's snow pale hands combing through the copy of _Trend Style_ lying among her things.

"Number four," the corners of his mouth spread as his finger drawls between pages. "Nice."

Liv bristles, rolls her eyes, and leans against the counter. "Ravi's."

His eyebrows spike. "Brother's got game. Now I usually go for _Playboy _myself, but each their own, am I right?"

"I thought you wanted to discuss brains." Her fingers curl a grip around the folds of her dress, all too aware of Javier Abano's experience with certain – her tongue darts a sprint against her lips, her eyelids a blink – positions.

Eyes still lowered, Blaine works at the corner of a page into a dog-ear. "Harsh. Sore subject?"

"Personal. Invasive. Off topic."

"Definitely sore," he mutters into the magazine's centerfold. "Hint taken. So about those brains–"

His fists clench against her dress's cotton. "How is it not sore for you? One day, you have a perfectly healthy sex life, and the next you're carrying the world's deadliest disease."

Blaine's face relaxes into a grin, mangled with a chuckle, hiding a question. "Are you calling it a disease? 'Cause I was thinking of it more as a permanent life style change."

_Oh, because that fixes everything_. "Well, as long as we have the proper terminology."

"Look," he folds the magazine back onto the table, "you're asking if I miss sex? Not having to worry about passing on the Big Z to my S.O.? If you're not dealing with humor, you're not dealing."

Her hips flatten against the table, every line of her back suddenly tense with just how close Sleazy McZombie is standing to her – just how much Abino's brain admires the fine-cut slant of his cheekbones, the ocean-depth penetration of his eyes.

If she moved a step, she'd be touching him. "You have a significant other?" she echoes. Her voice grits a bit too harsh against her throat.

He tilts his head, scrunches his lips. "Purely hypothetical."

Liv isn't sure if she needs to breathe. She definitely doesn't need to battle hyperventilation. Steeling her breath slow, she turns around to face the vacant slab.

She wants to punch him in the face. She wants to touch him.

(Because she _could_, as her lunch is so eager to remind her. She could touch him, bite him, scratch him, and leave him absolutely unchanged. It's only fair, really, given what he did to her–)

"Right," she cuts her thoughts jagged. "Now back to the brains–"

* * *

Hours later, she's flipping through the magazine again, aching and empty.

"Brain of a sex addict painter," she mutters to the emptiness of the morgue. "Who needs drugs?"

Number seven is bookmarked.

Liv bites her lip.

Blaine may be a lying creep, but damn if he doesn't have good taste.


	3. Break

_AU drabble written after 1x05, and set sometime in the future. _

_(In which Blaine hires Lowell to seduce Liv for brain-related purposes.)_

* * *

"Was it the hair?" The morgue air feels stiff around him, his every footstep a gunshot against its sterile, air-conditioned hum.

Liv won't look at him. "What?" For the first time since he's met her, Liv sounds rather dead. Monotone voice. One-word answer.

Liv won't even turn around.

"A few months ago," Blaine drawls a lean against the wall, chin tilting towards the buzz of the ceiling lights, "I walk in here, the first zombie to take the time to greet you, might I add, and I don't recall any sudden desperation to jump my bones."

He can't fault Liv for the lapse in her reply. He can picture her obscured face, all red eyes – the natural kind – and unblinking. Unnaturally still, as though a twitch will break her. Tensed around the occupied slab, fingers inches away from a crippled mess of pale skin, she holds herself together through the clench of her knuckles. They seep bone white against her chalk skin.

He shouldn't be here, doesn't need to be here, doesn't want to miss the sight of Liv Moore heartbroken. Heartbroken by his – albeit indirect – hand.

Blaine cocks his head, and pretends to examine his nails. "I hear some chicks dig brunettes. Now, I don't get the appeal myself, but…" He shrugs the bones of a chuckle. "You do you."

"Yeah well I don't get the appeal of psychopathic sadists." Her arms are still tense, her knuckles still locked, every bit of her still as rigid as a steel rod. "Weird, huh?" And she still won't look at him.

He hisses a breath, kicks himself from the wall, regrets the loss of its recline. "Rockstar McDreamy lied to you. I just–" It's worth the betrayal of his laziness to watch yet another twinge of tension creep her spine's length for every step he moves towards her.

"Paid him to?"

"I did you a favor."

He can pinpoint the exact moment her rubber band calm snaps. Scalpel still in one hand, she whirls on her heel, whirls towards him. Her glare could dissect a brain. "Gee, should I send flowers or a thank you note for the lackey you paid to seduce me for my brains?" An edged smile slices her lips. "Literally. He was sleeping me for literal brains. So you could sell them in your creepy zombie drug ring. Thank you so much."

Her scalpel rises an inch towards him. Blaine swallows a smirk. "Everyone has a price," he says calmly, palms facing her. Psychologically, that communicates openness; at least according to his wacko of a college psych professor. "Now you know what his is."

At the moment, he's an open book locked on one forged page. A regular _Gone Girl_. She does not need to know this.

Grip colorless around her scalpel, it grows whiter still, higher still, for every inch he moves towards her. "He's heartbroken, you know. Crazy for you. Hates me. Angry jawline, whiny music… The whole depressing nine yards."

If he hadn't spent the last two decades of his life watching for people's most minute reactions, Blaine might have missed her missed breath. She catches it quickly enough. "Right. And he's going to come storming in here any minute now, punch you in the face a few times, and then run away with me, all while a Celine Dion song swells in the background."

"I was thinking an intense but soulful instrumental. Celine…" his lips scrunch. "A bit passé, don't you think?"

For all his keen eyes and practiced observation, he doesn't register the sudden ball of Liv's free hand until its heel is slamming up against his nose.

He chokes. He falters. He grabs at his aching cartilage, because _damn_ for a girl with the frame of a pixie, she can throw a punch.

This should not surprise him. Liv Moore is also, as he recalls semi-lucidly, quite proficient at throwing drinks.

She smiles with all the sweetness of aspartame. "Thinking I need your zombie manwhore to charge in here and punch you for me?" Her scalpel glints specks of dim lighting. "_That's_ passé."

And even though everything is falling apart, even though he's lost his direct route to Liv Moore's endless stock of brains – he may have to shoot Lowell for that one, at least once; possibly in the kneecap – she has never looked hotter.

Blaine gulps the rust of his own blood.

_Bitch._


End file.
